1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink cartridge and its recycling method.
2. Description of the Related Art
An image forming apparatus that forms an image by utilizing an inkjet system can form a high-quality image with a simple operation. Further, maintenance and management of the image forming apparatus is simple. Therefore, it has widely spread, i.e., it is mostly used for a home-use printer.
In a general inkjet printer, ink droplets are ejected from a nozzle of a print head that moves parallel to a printed matter to carry out a printing or drawing. The print head also has a detachable ink cartridge mounted thereto with the nozzle, in which ink in the ink cartridge is supplied to the print head. When the ink in the ink cartridge is consumed, a user removes the empty ink cartridge, and sets a new ink cartridge.
Because consciousness for a recent environmental issue has grown more and more, a wasted ink cartridge is reused without being discarded in most cases. Specifically, the wasted ink cartridge is cleaned, new ink is filled therein, and the resultant is shipped. It is necessary to fill ink after an inside of the ink cartridge is cleaned upon recycling the ink cartridge, so that easy-to-disassemble structure is demanded.
Meanwhile, ink for an inkjet printer (hereinafter simply referred to as ink) is easy to leak since it is liquid. Therefore, a bonding portion of a container storing ink should completely be bonded, for example by welding, in order to prevent the ink from leaking from an inside of the inkjet printer or from a gap of the ink cartridge during transportation by a ship, a vehicle or the like. Accordingly, upon recycling the ink cartridge, workability is remarkably poor, since the ink cartridge should be cleaned after it is punched, dried after the cleaning operation, and filled with ink. There are many cases in which an ink cartridge is discarded without being recycled due to a breakdown and the like. It has been demanded a technique that can easily separate the bonded cartridge member without being broken down upon recycling the ink cartridge.
On the other hand, an electrically-disbonding adhesive has been known as one kind of an adhesive. The electrically-disbonding adhesive has a characteristic that a bond dissociation is caused when an electric current flows, so that it is easy to be peeled because adhesive strength at a bonding interface is weakened (e.g., refer to Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2003-504504). As one usage utilizing the characteristic of the electrically-disbonding adhesive, there has been proposed that the electrically-disbonding adhesive is used for fixing a vibration damper of a cold-cathode tube for a television set (e.g., refer to Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2005-33734).
The electrically-disbonding adhesive has a characteristic of reducing the adhesive strength when an electric current flows therein, so that it can easily be peeled from a member to which the adhesive is applied. Therefore, it is suitable for bonding a member that should be separated upon the recycle. However, when the electrically-disbonding adhesive is used as it is for an ink storing member that stores liquid having conductivity such as ink, an electric current flows in the ink when a voltage is applied to an electrode, whereby the electric current does not flow in the electrically-disbonding adhesive, thereby entailing a problem of not being able to peel the electrically-disbonding adhesive.